By PHK
Last May near the beginning of a three week tour of Andalusia, I stayed for several days in the Hotel Reina Victoria in Ronda, one of the largest and most picturesque of Spain's Pueblos Blancos, or white villages. These beautiful small medieval Iberian towns are picturesque dots in Andalusia’s mountains northwest of the busy port city of Malaga 
and away from the bustle and summer heat of the Costa del Sol.
The Reina Victoria, a prim but stately white hotel with green trim and lush English gardens,
backs onto a cliff over the Guadiaro river valley. The Serrania mountains lie far in the distance in the western sky. In days gone by, the Reina Victoria was a favorite hill station of the British armed forces in search of a cool repose from their posts on the sunny, steamy, strategic Rock of Gibraltar that guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea.
The regal Reina Victoria of today carefully retains the aura of that long gone era.
The Victoria is within walking distance of Ronda's Bull Ring, the glitzy new/old Parador Hotel with its spectacular views across the Tajo, or 490 foot gorge that separates the San Miguel, or Old Town, from the Mercadillo, its newer neighbor. The Victoria’s veranda is a quiet place to lounge, sip a beer while watching the sun sink behind the Serrania to the west at the end of a long day.
Spain: The Rough Guide, one of three guide books we used for our self-guided tour, mentioned that this grand old lady had another unique attribute: a special single room museum dedicated to the German speaking Austro-Hungarian poet and writer, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) who had stayed there in 1913.* The Rough Guide further stated that if one wanted to visit the Rilke room (#208) which was kept under lock and key to inquire at the reception. I did. Sure enough, the staff obligingly and immediately loaned me a key. I went in and looked around.
Inside was a small fireplace, an unprepossessing writing desk and a bouquet of roses on the mantel – that had become Rilke’s signature. This second floor room tucked under the eaves with Serrania view was tiny – but obviously large enough for Rilke’s purposes during that three month stay. (His bill is framed and hung in the room where he reportedly wrote The Spanish Trilogy.)
I knew Rilke wrote extensively in his native German. What I did not realize - until last weekend when I attended a performance by Quintessence, a unique choral group in Albuquerque that sings lesser known, but carefully chosen and always interesting works - that Rilke had also written almost 400 poems in French mostly during his much longer stay in Paris.
Quintessence sang five of Rilke’s poems in a single set entitled “Les Chansons des Roses.” They had been put to music by Morten Lauridsen. Some I liked more than others, but the one that stood out – and remains in my consciousness is “Contre Qui, Rose,” or “Against Whom Rose.”
From whom does it protect you, this exaggerated defense?
The English translation by Barbara and Erica Muhl reads:
“Against whom rose. Have you assumed these thorns? Is it your too fragile joy that forced you to become this armed thing? But from whom does it protect you, this exaggerated defense. How many enemies have I lifted from you who did not fear it at all? On the contrary, from summer to autumn you wound the affection that is given you.”
Of course, this wonderful, evocative verse and its vivid imagery are fraught with multiple meanings, but as I listened to the music and the words tumbled over and over again in my mind, I couldn’t help but think of their applicability today.
Particularly on this third anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I thought again about an America with a beautiful rose named after it - that nevertheless bristles with the thorns of tanks, aircraft, carriers and a flotilla of battle ships and a myriad of other weapons. Supported, of course, by a defense budget second to none.
But Rilke’s right. In reality from whom do these exaggerated thorns protect this country? What good do they do against the country’s real threats? And how could they have protected the U.S. against Bin Laden’s 9/11 19 suicide bombers flying commercial under the radar screen?
Or more likely, do these American thorns create enemies who, in Rilke’s words, “do not fear them at all” while driving away those who would like to be this country’s friends?
Photo identification and credits - top to bottom: Malaga: alcazaba and castillo de gibrafar, 2005 by Patricia K. Kushlis; Ronda: Reina Victoria garden, 2005 by Patricia H. Kushlis; Ronda: Ponte Nuevo, view of Tajo and Hotel Parador, 2005 by Patricia H. Kushlis; Ronda: Reina Victoria - Rilke room, 2005 by Patricia H. Kushlis
*The Rough Guide says he stayed there in 1913, the NY Times travel section says 1912. I didn’t think to check the bill itself.